


Soul Searching

by JackAmatus (StellaDraco)



Category: Multi-Fandom, Supernatural, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Character Death, Death, Fluff, Gen, Lost Memory, Minor Character Death, No Romance, Ridiculous, Sad, Temporary Character Death, Tragedy/Comedy, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5974854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/JackAmatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Note: This work is definitely going to be a lot more random than my other works and much less serious.  Basically, I had the plot idea and a desire to write Sans, after that I just decided to add other fandoms for fun.  This work is almost entirely written for my own pleasure, I hope you enjoy it, but it's going to get crazy and things will probably happen just because I find the idea entertaining.  Like Sans ending up in the universe of Supernatural at one point.  There is no canon here.<br/>In the wake of Chara's rampage, Sans wakes up in a different world, in a human body, with most of his memory gone.  His only clues to what brought him there are two small dogs who aren't what they appear to be and neither are the pearly orbs they carry.<br/>Note: POV will usually be Sans, but may switch to other characters at section breaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Soul Searching

It took me a while to realize I was awake.  Everything felt very warm and wet.  Well, not wet.  Humid, I guess.  That made me frown.  Why was it humid?  Where was I?  It shouldn’t be humid in…where was I from?  I…I couldn’t remember.  

My eyes were closed.  I guess I remembered enough that that seemed weird to me.  Something about it didn’t feel quite right.  Something about everything didn’t feel quite right.  My body felt different somehow, but I couldn’t remember how.  Why couldn’t I remember anything?  

I opened my eyes.  I was on my back.  A canopy of green came into focus above me beneath a ceiling of grey.  Clouds.  That seemed even weirder.  Why?  Where was I from that clouds seemed strange?  And a tree.  I was beneath a tree.  That, at least, seemed more normal.  Even the type of tree looked familiar, just not the setting.  The smell was strange.  The sound was much worse.  Everything seemed louder than I’d ever heard it, like I was in an engine.  This place around me was a city.  I guess I’d tuned it out or just been deafened until now.  I felt like I’d been in an explosion and that was my initial conclusion.  Something had exploded, it must have knocked me out.  Maybe it flung me outside.  One of dad’s experiments?  On mine?  

That was right.  I…I was…a scientist?  Maybe?  My head ached more than the rest of me and my thoughts just seemed…hazy.  Who was I?

Maybe I was hurt, in shock or something, and that was why I couldn’t think clearly.  I pulled myself upright, shakily, trying to look for any injuries.  My clothes were wet with dew, or rain, but I wasn’t bleeding.  My legs seemed intact, but something still looked wrong about them and it wasn’t just the fact that my jeans and sneakers didn’t feel like they were my normal clothes.  Something fell across my face and I reached up to brush it away, realizing what it was after I did so.  I had hair?  That didn’t seem right either.  Something was very wrong here.  

There was a dog.  The black ball of fluff was on me before I saw it, licking at my face so frantically that I fell back onto the grass.  It must have felt bad about that, because it suddenly backed off and sat down a few feet away, watching me while I propped myself up on my elbows to look at it.  

The dog wore a tag-less chain collar and a small leather pack on its back, but it was just a normal dog, or so it seemed.  It looked like some kind of akita, except it was all black.  Once it stopped trying to lick me, it wasted no time in picking up a strange pale pink orb, which it held carefully while it watched me.  I didn’t want to assume it was just an animal, between that weird orb it was holding and the fact that I couldn’t even remember who I was.  If this dog had answers, I might as well ask.  

I held out a hand, realizing that the fingers didn’t look the way I’d expected as I did so.  “Hi.  So…you know anything about how I got here?”  

The dog seemed to frown and wagged its curly tail frantically.  So it wasn’t sentient.  Right.  

“Kid,” someone asked, “are you okay?”  I hadn’t gotten much chance to look around until now.  There was a path nearby.  I guess I’d stepped off it to rest?  That made the most logic sense, but somehow I doubted that to be true.  The man who’d spoken was human, riding a bike he’d stopped a few feet away.  

The dog whined and rushed to stand between me and the human, staring me down.  Lack of speech aside, that gesture seemed clear enough.  Maybe this dog was sentient after all.  

The human might know how I got here, but he really seemed more confused than I was right now, which said quite a lot, and an intelligent dog seemed a step closer to home for some reason.  Besides, I liked dogs.  They were usually good people and I’d known a lot of them.  It was part of why I’d moved to..wherever I’d lived.  

“Um, yeah.  I’m fine.”  I tried to smile, but somehow that felt strange too and from the look the guy gave me, I think I just freaked him out.  He biked off like I was chasing him.  Oh well.  

Looking back at the dog, I found it glaring into the undergrowth to my right.  I didn’t have any weapons I knew of, but my first instinct was to fight whatever was there.  Why?  As I got more used to my surroundings, I felt sad, and angry, and I couldn’t remember why.  Something had happened.  Something terrible had happened.  

Another dog stepped into the clearing, this one also an akita but pure white.  His eyes gleamed a barely natural shade of blue.  Actually, that was my own eye color as well…wasn’t it?  At least I could remember that.  He held another orb, this one pearly grey, and had no collar.  

Before I could introduce myself, the new arrival placed his ball on the ground and wagged his tail as he greeted me.  “Hey, you’re probably wondering where you are, aren’t you?”

*       *       *

It took a great deal of effort to avoid snarling for fear of breaking the orb in my mouth.  My brother had the audacity to ask that?  Did he have any idea who he was speaking to, what he had done?  It was a miracle that what he’d tried had even worked, the thought that his spell had also succeeded was just too much.  He was going to get one of us killed, at least, and I had no way to stop him.  

Remarkably, our friend didn’t seem to remember any of it.  My brother’s spell had worked, now I just hoped it hadn’t worked too well.  We couldn’t do any of this without him.  Without him, we were just more refugees from the world that was gone now.  A little taller and a little younger-looking in his new body, our friend shrugged.  “Well…where’s a start.”  He looked up at the skyscrapers around the park, probably more than a little confused.  I hated the reason that my brother could take us to these places, but I had to admit the locations themselves evoked a great deal of wonder.  That was probably how my friend felt right now, I figured.  But maybe it wasn’t.  He often surprised me.  

My brother wagged his illusory tail, probably wagging his real one as well, he’d spent so much time disguised as a dog.  “We’re in San Fransisco.  It’s a city.  On the surface.  How much do you remember?”

Again, I choked back a snarl, forcing my jaws to keep a very gentle hold around the precious orb in my mouth.  How dare he!  He sounded so condescending!  Playing god like this…well, I guess he saw it as the lesser of two very real evils.  He was still a jerk for doing what he did.  

“Thanks.”  My friend had his usual smile back, but I couldn’t decide if I felt joy or fear when I noticed that dangerous glint in his eye.  He frowned slightly, no doubt struggling to recall what had happened.  After everything… how much had my brother erased?  Did he remember everything that had led up to this, did he realize why we weren’t underground any more?  Did he remember what had happened to him, and realize what my brother had done, or did he think that was an impossibility, and he was somehow recalling an alternate timeline?  Did he remember all the things he used to know about the timelines and the sort of things my brother understood much better than I did?  Did he remember his own brother?  Did he even recall who _he_ was?  

“What do _you_ remember about how I got here?”

My throat jerked in an involuntary whine that could have been joy or horror.  I thought he remembered.  The way he stared at my brother, it was all suspicion, he could see right through him, of course he could!  My brother…my brother was a dead man.  

My brother had always been a very good liar.  

He put on his best innocent look.  “Me?  I just found you a little while ago.  You wouldn’t wake up, so I went to try and get food.  Food wakes _everyone_ up, but I couldn’t find any.”

Blue gazes locked for a few more seconds before that stare turned to me.  He’d heard my whimper.  Of course he had.  He thought I had erased his memory, maybe he even remember enough to think I had committed the atrocity that my brother had.  Going invisible now would just make things worse, as much as I wanted to, so I stared at my paws, trying not to look at the orb in my mouth.  I felt awful and I hadn’t even done anything.  

I’m pretty sure even my brother knew our friend realized we knew more than we’d told him, but neither of them broke their smiles for an instant.  Before the past few days, I’d always known there was something powerful about my friend, even if I guess I’d never known him _too_ well, but he hadn’t scared me.  Now I found him absolutely terrifying, I just hoped he was still my friend.  Although, if he wasn’t, I would understand.  

My brother broke the tension, wiggling his whole body.  “I’m Vilde.  I’m glad you’re okay, pal.”  

Our friend stooped and held out his hand, exactly as he’d done when they’d first met.  “Nice to meet you.  I’m sans.”  

Vilde smiled up at Sans, wagging his tail, pretending he didn’t know how to shake hands.  He wanted to keep up his facade of being a harmless little dog, and if sans touched him, he would feel his real body instead.  Anyone would.  When Sans gave up on the handshake, Vilde nodded at me.  “Oh, that’s Sera over there.”

That eye gleamed lethally when he looked at me.  “Hi.  You know…it’s not very nice to pretend you can’t talk.”  I stared at the orb again, half expecting him to attack me and half fearing what would happen if the orb was destroyed or lost.  Sans didn’t remember.  He didn’t know what my brother was and he couldn’t guess what the orb contained.  He didn’t try to shake my paw.  

When he didn’t attack me right away, I set down the orb.  Vilde locked me in a glare that Sans didn’t notice.  I knew he would kill me if I told Sans what had happened as much as I knew that I didn’t stand a chance against either of them in a fight.  There were some days I wished I’d been more like Vilde, if only for the power to stand up to him.  “S-Sorry.”  I resisted the urge to tell Sans the truth.  

He gave me another long stare.  I couldn’t tell if he wanted to ask me for the truth or attack me.  He did neither, whichever he’d been considering, as Vilde spoke up again.  

“Well, uh…dogs don’t talk here, usually, and you’re a kid, so, uh, most places like inns would just try to find your parents.  We don’t want that, right?  I know a guy.  His family might take us in, but you should probably pretend to be a normal kid, okay?”  

Sans considered.  “I’ve been a kid for a long time.  So, we’re from the same world, right?”  He addressed both of us and my brother faltered.  

“`Course not, pal.  Like I said, I just found you unconscious out here a little while ago.”

“And you know this other dog that clearly knows more than he’s saying.  Besides, you said yourself that dogs don’t usually talk here.  So one or both of you are up to something.  It’s obvious.”  

Vilde let his orb fall from his mouth and roll along the grass in front of him.  “Well…damn.  You’re even smarter than I realized.”

I snapped at him before Sans could, “Of _course_ he is.  You’re lying about so many things you were bound to…”  I trailed off as he stared at me.  He didn’t need to glare.  There was no expression on his face at all and I knew I was dead if I didn’t shut up.  I eased the glowing pink orb back into my mouth to keep myself quiet.  My body was shaking so violently that I wondered if Sans could hear it and wonder about the sound.  

*       *       *

The dog beside me kept shuddering as it took the ball back into its mouth.  For some reason, that shuddering brought a quiet metallic ringing, like wind chimes from very far away.  What were they hiding?  

Vilde scratched the back of his neck silently.  “Look, pal, so what if I brought you here?  It doesn’t matter.  All I’m gonna say is I had a good reason for it.  I’ve got the answers you’re looking for and I know where you are.  I’m also trying to help you.  You need me.”

…he had a point.  I knew who I was, I remembered the way things had felt when I’d been bones and knew how different they felt now, and I remembered living underground.  I knew something had happened, some tragedy that filled me with emotion.  There was someone I hated and I couldn’t recall who or why, and there was something I needed to do, something I needed to stop.  

This was an alternate universe, maybe, or just somewhere on the surface.  From what I knew and remembered, he was right.  If adults found a kid on his own, they’d look for his parents.  I wanted to think that they wouldn’t find them, and that was almost certainly true, they definitely wouldn’t find my real parents, but then again, I still didn’t know why I was human.  There was a possibility that I had to consider.  

“…why?”

“Why what?”

“Why bring me here?”  I looked around at the peaceful, if noisy, city park.  “I mean, this coastal city looks… _Pacific._ ”  The stalemate overrode my anger enough that I couldn’t resist making the joke, and both dogs collapsed in fits of laughter.  Sera let go of his orb to breathe, wrapping one tiny paw around it to keep it safe.  He picked it back up as soon as he calmed down while Vilde answered my question.  

Any humor the dog had expressed vanished as he stated flatly, “We had to get you away.”

“Away from what?”

Vilde didn’t answer.  He made a show of playing with his grey orb as a jogger passed by.  She smiled and waved at me, but didn’t stop.  Once she was gone, Vilde became serious again.  “We should go.  We need to get there at the right time.  Don’t ask who I know.  I’m just a normal dog here.”  I guess I wasn’t getting an answer out of him.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter. The first signs of what universe this is start to appear and Vilde briefly drops his illusion.

Vilde led the way, trotting down the path, carrying his little grey ball in his mouth.  Every couple of meters he’d look back to make sure I was still following him and Sera, holding his own pink ball like it was some kind of treasure, kept pace right beside me, flinching away from anything that got too close.  

Nobody paid any attention to us.  It was as if they couldn’t even see us, they just kept going about their business.  We passed hot dog stands on the sidewalk and I remembered that I’d sold hot dogs sometimes.  I’d done a lot of different things, even if I couldn’t remember half of them now.  We passed a black and white dog and it reminded me of someone.  It took a few seconds after the memory to realize why it made me so sad.  Doggo.  Doggo was dead.  A lot of people were dead, even if I couldn’t remember them all.  Someone had killed them.  That was who I hated.  Who was that?  There was some reason I felt reluctant to kill the person.  I’d…I’d made a promise.  But I would break it.  They’d done too much, a promise couldn’t save them now.  

I had to find the person responsible, even if I couldn’t remember where they were now and had no idea how to find them, they would pay.  I wasn’t going to stop trying…although this strange city was a little…daunting.  And I felt like everyone I’d ever known was gone.  They probably were.  Somewhere, there was probably some other universe where they were safe, but… even so.  Those weren’t the exact people I knew.  

It wasn’t quite evening when we arrived.  Vilde led us to a narrow house, painted white.  A dog sat on the porch.  When we got close, Vilde barked and the bigger dog stood up to answer.  Hearing the bark, somebody moved inside the house, coming to the door, I guess, while the dog that had been waiting for us walked over to sniff me.  I guess this was Vilde’s contact.  I patted his fur.  “Hi, there.”  

A woman came to the door.  She looked normal, I guess.  She was human, dark skinned with dark eyes and long hair.  Her dress had a pattern of yellow flowers that reminded me of something I couldn’t fully remember.  She frowned at me.  “Hey, kid!  It’s getting late, you should head home.”  I didn’t want to lie outright, but she might not believe me if I told the truth and my usual way of acting seemed like it might be creepy in this situation, so I hesitated and in that time, she continued.  “Hey, you don’t look familiar.  Are you lost?”

I nodded.  It was true, I’d be lost anywhere on this world, technically.  The woman stepped out onto the porch, holding the door open.  The big dog gave me one last sniff before he turned and ran inside.  “Come inside.  You can have something to eat and I’ll call your parents.  Do you know their number?”

I shook my head and followed her inside.  I remembered someone’s phone number, but I couldn’t think whose it was.  It was someone important, but not anymore.  He was gone.  Wait.  Speaking of gone, did I even have my phone on me?  I checked my pockets.  Nope.  I had nothing.  I was also broke, not that that was too much of a change.  My phone and money would probably be useless here anyway.  

The woman led me through a hallway, past a dark living room, and into a kitchen.  The house was small, and not incredibly clean, but it was nice enough.  It certainly beat being outside, even if the weather was pretty mild.  I was used to snow, I remembered.  This place was warmer just…dirtier.  The dogs followed me inside, still holding their orbs.  They stood in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder, like soldiers standing guard, and I guess the woman found that odd.  She gave them a curious stare before turning back to me.  “Are those your dogs?”

“Yup.”

“They’re…kinda creepy.”

I looked back at them.  Sera promptly lay down with his ball between his paws and started nosing at it, pretending to be a normal dog.  Vilde just kept staring forward, keeping his body perfectly still except for his pale blue eyes, which flicked from me to the woman and back.  The bigger dog ignored both of them, he was eating from a bowl in the corner.  “Yup.  They’re creepy dogs.”

“Is that one wearing a backpack?”

“Yup.”

“What’s in it?”  Sera, who’d started gently licking the pink orb, flicked his gaze back to the woman, clearly concerned by her questions.  His eyes caught the light and we both realized they were bright red.  The woman stifled a yelp.  “Kid, are you sure those are normal dogs?”

I shrugged.  “Well…they aren’t perpendicular…”

Her left eyebrow slowly ascended and neither dog laughed.  

“Okay, that wasn’t a very good joke.  Sorry.”

She stayed silent for a moment, probably wondering if she’d made a mistake inviting me inside.  “Alright.  What’s your name?  Do you know anyone I can call, or where your parents work?”

“I’m sans Gaster.”  She waited for me to say more and I shrugged.  

Giving up, the woman turned around and started making a sandwich.  “That’s an interesting name.  I’m Delilah.  You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the police station and we’ll try to find your family, alright?”

“Um, sure.”  I just said it flatly and that seemed to unsettle her a bit.  

“Do you like baloney?”

*      *      *

The woman called her two boys down from their rooms and shared sandwiches with them and Sans.  They offered Vilde and I some dog food and tried to pet us.  Dodging their fingers wasn’t hard and even the kids weren’t very determined.  I think we scared them as well.  Human instinct was pretty accurate with our kind.  I guess it was just lucky that Chara hadn’t found us.  Vilde had eaten earlier, probably nabbing a stray cat or stealing something, so I ate the food they’d offered both of us, careful to eat only when no one was looking.  I had to wait for that opportunity, so, in the mean time, when my brother slunk off into the darkened living room, I followed.  At the dinner table, Sans was telling jokes, and the human children loved it, so Vilde and I didn’t worry too much about being overheard.  I set down my orb, hoping it didn’t glow so brightly as to draw attention from the other room.  

“We have to tell him.”

“We will,” Vilde chuckled, “just let him relax for a few days.  He _did_ die, after all.”

“Kind of.”  Our canine host stopped in the hallway, joining our conversation in what I assumed to be his own way.  I knew nothing about him and just figured that he was some poor animal under one of Vilde’s spells.  “Sans knows we’re hiding something.  Soon enough he’ll find out about Chara and he’ll want to go after her.  We need to go after her.  We don’t know where she even went, what if—”

“A couple days won’t make any difference,” Vilde countered, dropping his illusory dog form to stretch out on the couch, one ivory claw clutching his pearl.  I wasn’t as powerful and didn’t risk doing the same.  “If Chara can find them or us in just a few days, without any guidance, we’re all dead anyway.  Everyone’s dead.”

“She might not be alone.  And what if the same rules apply?  If she has seven souls, she’s a god, right?  We’re already assuming she destroyed the universe we all came from, why not just smash every one she gets to until she finds us?”

He shook his horned head carefully, making sure not to rattle his scales.  “She’s alone.  There’s no way she saved the flower, you know who we’re dealing with here.  She’s god-like, but she can’t just destroy everything.  She doesn’t hate _every_ world.”

“Are you sure?”

The dog behind me stepped fully into the room and became a man.  He spoke in a whisper, “Are you saying some kind of…god is after you?  And you brought her here?”  

Vilde waved dismissively, “No.  Chara has no way of tracking us, I doubt she even knows we’re alive.”  He looked back at me, “She’s going after the others first.  She doesn’t know Sans is still alive.  They’re the only ones she thinks escaped.”

Dog-man relaxed.  He whined, but returned to canine form, though he didn’t leave us alone.  I think he probably regretted letting us stay here, and part of that might just be because he could see Vilde’s true form right now.  I stared at my brother, wondering if his scales had always glowed or if that was just because of what was inside him.  I’d seen the yellow flower around a few times before it started talking to Chara; I think my brother might have spoken to it before then.  That might be where he’d gotten some of his awful ideas.  

“I…I hope you’re right, Vilde.  Just keep in mind that you have a terrible habit of underestimating people.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pun is awful, sorry. I really couldn't think of good ones this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

When the family went to bed, Delilah let Sans stay in the third bedroom upstairs.  Apparently, it was some combination of guest bedroom and storage.  They turned out the lights downstairs but didn’t go back into the hallway.  That might have been my fault, actually, but it was an accident.  My eyes glowed in the dark, and even disguised as a tiny akita, a black figure with glowing red eyes might give pause to someone walking around at night.  It still bothered me that we weren’t telling Sans the truth, so once my brother and I had finished talking, I’d lain down in the doorway to the kitchen, watching dinner while I had worried about everything we were running from.  Mostly Chara.  Nothing had ever terrified me like that nightmare human.  I didn’t want to think about what she’d done, but I couldn’t distract myself successfully.  

Vilde put his illusion back up and hid under the couch he’d been lying on so he could sleep and it wasn’t likely that someone would touch him and feel his true form.  The skinwalker, unwilling to leave his family unprotected, watched me from the stairs until I ate the food we’d been given and went up to Sans.  He kept well ahead of me as I followed him, looking back and listening warily.  In the upstairs hallway, he nosed open the guest room door quite pointedly and walked farther down the hall, planting himself protectively between the doors to the bedrooms of his family.  I gave him the friendliest nod I could manage and walked over to the guest room.  I could hear that Sans was awake, and I didn’t want to be rude if I could avoid it.  I wasn’t here to harass him.  

*      *       *

The room Delilah let me stay in was warm and fairly comfortable.  The bed wasn’t big, but I could fit in it.  There was enough room to get in and out and the rest of the space had been filled with boxes, old board games, and a hoard of stuffed animals.  Those were pretty creepy, actually.  Some poked out of open boxes, but most had just been piled on the games.  They stared around the room with dead glass eyes.  That pretty much took the room from homey to eerie, but the bed was fine, Delilah had given me a set of pajamas that hadn’t fit her sons, and it was free, so I couldn’t really complain.  For some reason talking to the kids had made me sad.  It reminded me of another memory, something nagging at the back of my mind but just out of reach.  

The room had a window by the bed that looked out on the tiny backyard and the houses beyond that, and beyond them, the rest of the city.  I couldn’t see a single cloud in the sky.  I guess it was beautiful, I just didn’t appreciate it as much as I might have under normal circumstances.  I still felt like there was something urgent I had to do, probably going after whoever had murdered my friends, and I had no way of even finding them.  Chara.  The name reformed like a pond icing over.  That was her name.  Chara.  I still couldn’t remember what she’d done, specifically.  I mean, I knew she’d killed a lot of people, and that was horrible, but there was something…someone specific.  She’d killed someone important to me and I couldn’t remember anything about them.  That made it worse.  

Between my emotions and the creepy stuffed animals, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep, but I was tired, and I knew I should try while I had the chance.  I didn’t sleep well normally, I remembered that much, so I didn’t hold out hope for a good night’s rest tonight.  I sat awake for a while after the house fell silent, looking out the window and trying, in vain, to recall more of what had happened.  The door creaked open while I thought.  A pair of glowing red eyes told me who I was dealing with.  Honestly, I hadn’t expected Sera to wait politely.  These dogs, and most dogs, for that matter, tended to just barge in.  Even after I looked at him, Sera stayed in the doorway, reluctant to intrude.  

“Ruff night?”  The dog apparently didn’t catch the joke, but it wasn’t that obvious.  He padded into the room, keeping to the center of the narrow cleared path as if he was afraid he’d bump into something.  He set the orb down carefully and I realized that it glowed.  

“A-are you…okay?”  Sera shuffled his little paws on the floor and lowered his ears.  He looked sincerely concerned, but I wasn’t too inclined to trust him.  He was still hiding something.  He knew how I’d gotten here, or at least he knew much more than he’d admitted.  Sera, at least, seemed like a bad liar, while Vilde was harder to read.  The problem was that I didn’t have much choice because they were my only real connection to home.  Assuming there was anything left to go back to.  Chara had killed everyone I could remember, was I really so sure it was worth finding my way back there?  

I put on my usual smile as a force of habit.  “`Course.  I’m fine.”

Sera wagged his tail and then whimpered, “I…I have something for you.  It’s…it’s not mine, it’s…  I have it now.  You should have it.  I’m sorry.”  He squirmed half out of his tiny backpack to rummage inside of it, ignoring my curious frown.  The backpack held more than I’d expected and after shuffling through books and CDs and a stash of candy, Sera let a length of red cloth tumble onto the floor.  While he pulled the backpack back into place and closed the flap, I stared at the torn fabric.  I recognized it instantly even though the memories took longer to come into focus.  It only measured about five feet long and maybe one foot wide, but I knew it had been bigger.  The material was warmer than most capes, more like it should be a shirt but it hadn’t been, and a fine grey dust still clung to the texture of the weave.  I knew that dust.  Just seeing it brought back the agonizing memory.  I hadn’t witnessed his death, so I could almost think that I’d been powerless to stop it.  I’d gone to make sure Alphys and the others knew what was happening, and in that time, I’d left him alone.  I picked the torn bit of cape off the floor, hating the way that my shaking hands shook some of the dust onto the floorboards.  I’d found it in the snow where he’d fallen.  Where Chara had killed him.  The dust had already started to blow away when I’d arrived.  I’d been too angry and hurt to pick it up, I’d just gone after Chara and I’d regretted leaving it there once I’d left.  I think I’d planned to go back after…if somehow I managed to stop her, but I guess that hadn’t happened.  I had my suspicions about why, but I didn’t want to voice them just yet.  I couldn’t think of a single good reason I would be here and not underground.  

I guess I just sat there staring at the tattered red cloth in my hands and I must have done that for long enough that Sera felt concerned.  He put his paws on the bed and looked up at me, although his feet left no impression in the blankets.  “Sans?”  He’d set down the orb, or so it seemed, but rather than rolling across the floor it hovered, perfectly still, a fraction of an inch above the floor behind Sera.  

*       *      *

He barely moved.  I could hear his heartbeat and detect the other signs from his human body that he knew what I had given him.  His breathing maintained a forced rhythm and he tilted his head down, but I could see the glimmer of tears in his human eyes.  I couldn’t see his face clearly while I lay on the floor, pretending to be a dog, so I expected a look of grief, or devastation, emotion in bright, patient eyes that might convince me to risk my brother’s wrath even more than I already had.  I expected that same tone in his voice, but when he spoke, I knew that if he had not been human now, I would be facing blank eye sockets, or even that paralyzing blue glow.  

“What happened?  Where is Chara?”

I froze at those words, straining to hear any other movement in the house.  Hearing only steady breaths and no sign that my brother might be listening, I chanced it.  I cradled my orb, still carrying it in my talons while I lifted my body into the air.  The tip of my invisible tail drifted to the side, shutting the door across the small room.  I slid my illusory dog form up onto the bed, half expecting an attack as I tried to get close enough that I would not be overheard.  Sans remained absolutely still.  

“Chara…  We don’t know where Chara is.  She…she destroyed the world.  Our world.  All of our world.  We…we fled.  We took you with us.”  

*       *       *

My hands started folding the red cloth, almost reverently making it into a scarf which I draped around my neck while I considered Sera’s reaction.  Something about the black monster’s name was almost familiar too, but it bothered me more how this monster I’d initially mistaken for an enemy seemed so genuinely concerned about me.  After Chara…I didn’t want to trust it.  But if I had to trust one of them, Sera would be it.  

I remembered Papyrus.  I really didn’t want to, but at the same time I was glad that I did, glad that I had something to remind me of him, and completely devastated that I’d ever forgotten him at all.   

I tried to distract myself.  Sera seemed to be in a chatty mood, so I pushed my luck.  “What are you?”

Without a word, the dog illusion vanished and a monster took shape.  He wasn’t really that large, only long.  From his fluffy beard to the tufted tip of his tail he measured about twenty feet, if not more, but his body never got wider than a few feet and he floated above the ground like a cloud.  He was a dragon, wingless, with four thin and stubby legs, two of which clutched that glowing orb.  I’d only really known one dragon —there weren’t too many around— but I recognized him.  Once I saw Sera, I recalled what I knew of him almost instantly.  Dragons were pretty much just like everyone else, but they did tend to be sort of arrogant and flashy; Sera had been the opposite.  Most people in Snowdin never saw him and I’d never learned that he had a brother.  He lived in the forest and spent most of his time invisible and hiding, he’d only talked to me at all because I was out there keeping watch all the time.  I guess he was very shy.  Actually, I hadn’t recognized him sooner because he’d never used that nickname.  Sera had only told me his name once and then he’d been so embarrassed that he’d disappeared before I could say anything, but he did that pretty often.  

I wasn’t too surprised when Seraphim, realizing that I remembered him, looked away awkwardly and went back to his illusion of being a dog.  He curled around his orb, balancing on the edge of the bed and snuggling against me.  I wasn’t happy that he’d brought me here, or lied to me, and I can’t say we’d ever been good friends, but at least this was somebody I kind of knew who was still alive.  Things had gotten so bad that that passed for a blessing.  

“I’m sorry.” Sera whimpered.  Was he apologizing for something specific or just saying he was sad everyone was gone?  I didn’t know and right now, I wasn’t sure that I cared.  I looked out the window again, half wanting to be alone and half glad that at least somebody from my home had survived beside myself.  My fingers rubbed the frayed ends off the red cloth without conscious thought.  Maybe being in a different reality would prevent resets, or maybe the fact that that world had been destroyed already did that.  I wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.  

Sera whined and snuggled against my side, shifting his invisible arms to cradle the orb more tightly.  The red glow reflected off the glass of the window.  I looked back over at the dragon, whose dog eyes were closed and his real face remained invisible.  He’d always had a ball with him, thought I’d never known or asked what it was.  I’d made a few jokes about it, and he’d seemed to like them, but I wasn’t in a joking mood right now.  Thing is, I didn’t remember it being pink or glowing.  What I remembered was a gray ball the same as the one his brother had.  

“What is that?”

“Precious.”  Sera mumbled, curling a little more carefully around the thing.  …I guess he was already falling asleep.  

I figured I couldn’t get any more information out of him right now and looked back out the window, watching the stars for a few hours while I thought.  Why had the dragons taken me?  I guess the most likely reason was that they’d somehow seen me fight, or at least knew how capable I could be.  Or maybe they needed a scientist and Alphys had already been…  They were probably dead.  Even if I didn’t think it specifically, all of them had probably died.  The odds of Alphys and the others escaping Chara were just too low.  But maybe?  

I hoped because I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I didn’t convince myself they might be alive.  

*       *       *

After everything that had happened today, I needed sleep more than I’d expected.  I felt conscious thought ebbing away almost as soon as I closed my eyes.  Normally, I slept lightly; it was a dragon thing, I guess, like an instinct, but it only happened when I slept alone.  I remembered sharing a nest with my brother any our parents and knew I had slept peacefully then, so it had to be that I slept so easily now because I was not alone.  It wasn’t just feeling Sans’ human body, soft and warm against the scales of my side, but also the orb.  

People who weren’t dragons called the orb a pearl.  They didn’t understand what it actually was; some thought it was an egg while others simply believed it to be treasure.  In a way, it was a treasure, or at least mine was right now.  An empty pearl became powerless without the dragon whose magic controlled it, but right now, mine was not empty.  It was alive, or rather what it held was living.  Because it was my pearl, I felt that as vividly as I felt the blankets beneath me or the slight draft through the open window.  I felt not only the life, but the essence of what it contained.  It was afraid.  My brother had claimed that he felt nothing when his pearl had been occupied, but whether he had lied or not did not matter, I only knew that this was not the case for me.  It had been afraid when I contained it and it remained afraid now.  Whether this fear had simply been frozen in time or whether it knew what happened around it I could not be certain either, but I suspected the former.  It should not be afraid if it knew what was happening.  We had reason to fear, that was true, but of our group, it would always be the safest.  It had the most to protect it.  

For now, Sans did not know it’s true nature, so it was more vulnerable than it might have been.  That was why I must protect it.  This orb held something I would give my life to protect, if I had to.  It and Sans were the most precious things around me right now, but Sans could defend himself while the orb was helpless.  That is, it would have been helpless without me.  

Aside from myself, only one other knew what it held, what it was, and what it could do, and Vilde had no reason to preserve it.  What I carried had not been a part of his plans and although he never mentioned it, I knew he wasn’t happy about what I had done.  It served his purpose to make sure that Sans continued to feel that he had nothing left and no reason to hold back from a vendetta against Chara, culminating in a fight which would likely end his life.  If Sans sought Chara with reckless abandon, my brother felt that he couldn’t possibly lose.  Even if Vilde assisted Sans, I wasn’t so sure, and I didn’t want to find out how Sans would react if even that last goal disappeared.  Vilde couldn’t fight Chara alone and he couldn’t risk Sans choosing to preserve what he had rather than pursue this vendetta, so he had to make sure that Sans had nothing but his grudge.  My orb had the potential to change that, which meant that, if he got the chance, Vilde would make sure that it did not survive.  I had to make sure that didn’t happen.  With me curled around it like a massive yarn ball, even my brother would have trouble stealing my orb while I slept. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter because the next one will probably be long.

The sun hadn’t risen yet when my brother clawed me awake.  “Wake him up, Sera, we need to leave.”  Vilde loomed over me, I knew that from where I’d heard his voice even if his illusionary dog form remained on the floor a good distance away.  He had his pearl in his mouth while behind him the skin changer carried a newspaper.  The front page bore a picture of Sans’ human body, probably part of an article that reported him missing.  It was clear enough now why my brother’s request seemed so urgent.  

Vilde clawed me again, ripping open the scales of my back which became visible as a reddish tint in the thick fur of my illusion.  “ _Wake him._ ”

I nudged Sans’ shoulder with my snout.  Vilde had sent me to wake him before as well.  He feared what Sans might do if startled and knew that I was in no position to disobey such orders.  I just had to hope that Sans wouldn’t be startled when I tried to wake him.  

I had to nose him again.  I knew before he woke that he was dreaming, and not a good dream.  I could hear his heartbeat and smell the adrenaline in his body, which didn’t bode well for him waking calmly.  Sans jolted into a sitting position and for the barest second his left eye gleamed blue before he seemed to remember where he was.  He closed both eyes and let out his breath in what was almost a sigh.  He sat very still for a long moment.  The fact that Vilde didn’t order him to get moving showed how much my brother actually feared Sans.  He sometimes underestimated his intelligence, but never his combat skills.  Vilde had seen Sans fight, I’d mostly heard his account.  I didn’t need to see him fight to fear what he could do if he had reason to attack me, but I’d never been capable in a fight to begin with.  

I guess Sans was just sorting through his dreams, or maybe coming to terms with reality again, considering how much he’d lost, but I was starting to worry.  I nosed him again.  “We should get moving.  Are you okay?”

“…I’m fine.”  I’d started to wonder if he might be lying when he said that.  He didn’t seem fine, but I wanted to believe him.  

Vilde voiced his latest excuse, although I guess this one was partly true, it just glossed over the reasons.  “We can’t stay here any longer, but I have another friend in the area.  He’s on the other side of the city, though, so we’ll have a lot of walking to get to him.”  Sans nodded.  I wasn’t sure if he was too tired or distracted to wonder why we couldn’t stay or if he just didn’t care.  I don’t think he liked the sound of all that walking, but he seemed to realize that he didn’t have much choice.  

As a dragon, I didn’t wear clothes and normal hygiene rituals were problematic right now— my body couldn’t fit in a human shower, or at least not the one in this house— so Vilde and I waited downstairs while Sans got ready.  The skin-changer apparently trusted him more than us, so he shadowed us down to the hallway and listened while I chatted with Vilde.  

“Might I ask which friend this is?”  Vilde knew some shady characters, some worse than others.  If I remembered correctly, this world had some of the darkest.  Vilde’s tendency to mess with beings well out of his league usually just meant that he dealt with people like Sans and that awful flower I’d seen around, but in this world that wasn’t the case.  Some of the people he knew here could probably have destroyed the underground with a poorly timed cough.  Aside from the general sense of awe at that kind of power, I hated this world.  When we were here, I felt like a goldfish released into the depths of the ocean.  It terrified me.  

Vilde snorted, making the skin-changer flinch.  “He’s not a demon.  His name’s Paul.  Actually, he’s not the sort of crowd I usually run with, he’s your kind of person.  You’ll like him.”

“…I’m not sure I can trust your judgement on that.”

“You have a better idea?” he scoffed, “Tomorrow I’ll have recovered enough to take us somewhere else, hopefully somewhere that we might find Alphys and the others.  Maybe we can bounce some ideas off of Sans, he might have some way to help us find them.  Otherwise we’re just hopping between realities at random.”

“What about letting him recover?”  I drew a conclusion before he could answer.  “Are you afraid you were wrong?  That Chara can find us here?”

He shook his head.  “I want him to recover before he fights her again, thinking is less dangerous.  And Chara’s out of her league if she finds us here anyway.  It’s more likely that she’ll find wherever the others went, they have less mobility between universes, we need to find them before she can.”

“We aren’t even sure they made it out.”

“They made it out.”

He sounded so confident.  “Are you saying that because you know or because you can’t accept the alternative?”  He didn’t answer, so I continued.  “We don’t know how all this is effecting Sans, he’s tough, but…  Vilde, he’s been through a lot and right now I’m really not sure he’s…okay.”

His scales flashed a little more brightly than usual.  “Of course he isn’t okay.  He’ll be fine once Chara is dead.  I know what you have and I know what you’re trying to convince me to do and it isn’t going to happen.  If you know what’s good for you, you won’t mention it again, or better yet, you’ll break that orb yourself.”  My grip tightened protectively and he must have seen that.  “You mention it one more time and I’ll smash that orb myself, you know you can’t stop me.”

My ears drooped back along the sides of my skull as Sans came downstairs.  I’m sure he got the gist of our conversation, but he didn’t say anything.  Vilde snorted at me.  “That’s what I thought.  We’re burning daylight.  Let’s go.”


End file.
